One of the five Crockett boys wished he could be a gentleman back east and go to school for book-learning. Not Davy! He loved the wilderness of eastern Tennessee, their rough little cabin on the Nolachucky River. He wanted only to learn to hunt like Pa and his big brothers. Sometimes he was allowed to go with them to help carry the rifles, but Pa wouldn't let him shoot till he was nine years old. After that he could have one bullet a day, provided he brought home game. He learned to place his shots carefully, and he was overjoyed when Pa finally gave him the old rifle, Little Nancy. She had better care than any member of the family; Davy even risked his own life once to rescue Little Nancy from flood-waters.

Davy was likable, but he wasn't an easy boy to live with. Fearless and quick-tempered, he was always ready for a scuffle. Mrs. Crockett said he was just as quirky as his hotheaded Irish father. Then, too, Davy liked to boast how smart he was, how clever with a rifle. But oddly enough, he was usually right. No boy in Tennessee practiced or tried harder to make himself a good rifleman, woodsman and hunter.

When the Crocketts moved to the Abingdon Trail in 1795 to start a tavern, the boys enjoyed the coming and going, the guests' exciting talk. And wonderful talk it was. Few men told better stories than the frontier hunters. Davy delighted in the fantastic tall tales. He made up some of his own, just as amusing, just as exaggerated. Soon he was known on the Abingdon Trail as the boy who could outgrin a coon, who kept a panther to do his shivering for him, who shot more beasts than ever roamed the forests!

Like all his boasting, his tall tales had truth in them, and Davy did become a famous hunter. But he never liked civilization. He kept moving farther and farther west, always into wilderness territory, finally into the great new country of Texas, where he so gallantly defended the Alamo.

One of the most glamorous figures of our history and folklore is added to the Childhood of Famous Americans Series with the brave young rifleman's story. Legends have clustered around Davy Crockett, but the facts of his boyhood are scarcely less colorful or interesting than the tall tales. Davy was as daring and reckless a boy as ever lived. This lively story shows how rough wilderness life developed the strong, vigorous character of the backwoods boy who became the hero of Tennessee and Texas.

From the dust jacket